The crappiest supermarket in Russia?

If there was a website for the crappiest supermarket awards then Patersons just have to be serious contenders. Living in a country it’s always the small things that get to you. You are prepared for ideological differences and the accepting Russian psyche that made it possible for Communism to flourish and then go on flourishing long after anyone with a half a brain and one eye could see that the system was really good only for the ruling elite and those with high-up Party connections. You are prepared for a language that sounds strange even to the locals who look askance at those from neighbouring republics who try to speak it. And you are prepared for the usual level of difficulty that the easiest of tasks require here.

What you are not prepared for is a level of incompetence so gross that it stretches even the imagination of the most imaginative.

So I went to the supermarket. It’s near so I went to Patersons. Boy was that a mistake! I mean it takes little common sense from a supermarket customer service point of view to realize that you can dispense with useful displays and a logical way of arranging items in the aisles. You can dispense with a way of service which makes it easy for your customers to shop (like, for example why, after you buy a jar of caviar at the caviar counter it is taken to the checkout of your choice [you need to decide there and then] to wait for you when you finish the rest of our shopping, go there, queue and claim it so you can pay for it!!!). You can dispense with proper labeling, price tickets that actually match the products displayed and proper lighting. You can even dispense with cosmetic cleanliness provided everything is not covered in dust. YOUCANNOT DISPENSE WITH PLASTIC CARRIER BAGS!

Especially when you have given no prior notification to your customers busy buying all the difficult to carry things one picks up at a supermarket on a Sunday evening.

Then, when you get to the checkout you do not, as a cashier, shake your head, rub your hands together and explain that the administration is rethinking the free bag policy. I mean…HELLO?

If you are rethinking a policy you do not stop doing business. Well, it’s all pretty academic. They have my vote as the crappiest supermarket in St Petersburg and I am never going there again. Adios baby!

That’s how western customers react to bad service!